The first three fast response cutters—the USCGC Richard Etheridge (WPC-1102), Bernard C. Webber (WPC-1101), and William Flores (WPC-1103).
U.S. COAST GUARD
The September issue of US Naval Institute Proceedings has two articles about the Webber class WPCs that are currently featured articles online.
- Modern Cutters for IndoPaCom Partners is a Win-Win Opportunity, by Lt. Tai T. Chan, U.S. Coast Guard
- The Navy Should Use the Fast Response Cutter as a Patrol Boat, by Cdr. Steve Hulse, U.S. Coast Guard
MSN shared a 1945 article by James Holmes, J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College, that seconds Cdr. Hulse proposal, “The U.S. Navy Needs Sentinel-Class Cutters to Serve as Missile Patrol Craft,”
These are the right ships to help carry out U.S. maritime strategy in congested coastal terrain such as the Western Pacific, in wartime and times of tense peace alike. Denying an antagonist like China’s navy access to waters around and between Pacific islands is the strategy’s beating heart. Swarms of small, cheap, lethal surface and subsurface warships working with aircraft overhead and troops on the islands can close the straits along the first island chain, laying fields of overlapping fire that imprison Chinese sea and air forces within the island chain and bar the return home to units plying the Western Pacific. For self-defense, small surface combatants can mingle with merchant traffic amid East Asia’s cluttered maritime geography. In so doing they obscure their whereabouts and turn ambient conditions to tactical advantage. Let Chinese rocketeers try to distinguish friend from foe.
The first article by Lt. Chan suggests,
Continuing production of fast response and national security cutters and transferring early hulls to regional allies would improve deterrence and interoperability.
This may not seem to make sense from the Coast Guard’s point of view in that USCGC Bernard C. Webber was commissioned in 2012 and the last of the 65 funded vessels of the class will be commissioned in about three years at which point the Webber will be only about 14 years old, still pretty new for a Coast Guard vessel. But looking at this from a whole of government perspective it looks a bit different. State Department hopes to gain or maintain influence with friendly nations that may not be able to afford adequate resources to patrol their waters. We also have an interest in the health of our ship building industry. There is presidency for this. Australia has twice built new patrol boats for their Western Pacific neighboring island nations. The Coast Guard would, of course, be much more receptive to the idea if funding for the replacement craft came out of someone else’s budget.
If the Navy did choose to build vessels of this class, and keep the production line going, then transfers of early model FRCs might be more readily accepted as they reach 20 or more years old.
The Second Article by Cdr. Hulse suggests,
“…the FRC’s Mk IV over-the-horizon cutter boat weighs 8,700 pounds and is stored in a notch near the stern. While this boat is highly capable for a variety of Coast Guard missions, it would not play a role for the Navy in conflict. Instead, a Navy FRC could mount a Naval Strike Missile box launcher with four tubes (8,600 pounds) at the stern, making it a formidable surface combatant. In addition, the deck forward of the pilothouse has considerable space for launching and recovering unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), enabling aerial surveillance and targeting. In fact, a Coast Guard FRC launched and recovered an Aerovel Flexrotor UAV while operating with the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 59 in Bahrain…with the current production line delivering four new FRCs per year to the Coast Guard at $65 million each. At that rate, the Navy could field 20 FRCs in just five years for the price of one Constellation-class frigate, which is projected to cost $1.3 billion per hull.”
The article goes into considerable detail about how the class has exceeded expectations along with cautions about what was required to make them succeed. It also suggests that the FRC could be the basis for an unmanned surface vessel.
Boots on the Ground, Navy Style:
City police forces have found they need patrolmen walking the beat who know the neighborhood and the people who live there to effectively fight crime. Armies need infantry to control and hold territory.
High end combatants can defeat their hostile counterparts to make sea control possible, but effective sea control is not possible without craft that can get into shallow water and enter every port. As Julian Corbett would said, Naval Control is not exercised by battleships.
The US Navy, forever focused on winning the big battle, has never had much enthusiasm for the craft that are the “boots on the ground” of a naval war. They tend to assume that allies and/or the Coast Guard will fill that role, or if not, they can build them when they need them and to some extent it has worked. Even so, it might have worked better if we had built and operated more of the vessels of the type before the shooting started.
In World War I, the US built hundreds of subchasers and 1000 ton destroyers. In WWII it was hundreds of PT boats that proved largely ineffective as torpedo boats but essential for the destruction of coastal traffic in both the Pacific and the Mediterranean. They were supplemented by the original LCS, Landing Craft Support, heavily armed shallow draft landing craft, nearly the same size as the FRCs. For Vietnam the Navy called on the Coast Guard and also built 170 Swift Boats and 718 Patrol Boat, River.
The U.S. Navy destroyer USS William D. Porter (DD-579) sinking after she was near-missed by a “Kamikaze” suicide aircraft off Okinawa, 10 June 1945. USS LCS(L)(3)-86 and McCool‘s LCS(L)(3)-122 are alongside, taking off her crew. Though not actually hit by the enemy plane, William D. Porter received fatal underwater damage from the near-by explosion.
Why would the Navy want these Patrol Craft?:
- To enforce blockades
- To counter kamikaze UAS and USV.
- To support UAS, USV, and UUVs
- To counter covert mine laying, arms smuggling, and intelligence agent or special forces transportation by boat.
- To escort landing craft into an amphibious objective area. To rescue personnel from craft that are sunk. To tow disabled craft to safety. If properly equipped, to provide short range direct Naval fire support.
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Strait of Hormuz, august 6, USS Thomas Hudner, the Navy’s Lewis and Clark class cargo ship USNS Amelia Earhart and the U.S. Coast Guard’s Sentinel class cutter USCGC Charles Moulthrope, L3Harris Arabian Fox uncrewed surface vessel (USV)
If assigned to 5th Fleet, it would be logical to equip them with Hellfire/JASM or APKWS to counter Iranian drones and swarm tactics. In the Western Pacific arming with Naval Strike Missile is logical as would using the same air-search radars being used on the FRCs based in Bahrain. It might be possible to fit a Sea RAM forward, but if not, one or two remote weapon stations with an AAW capability might be enough.
A Final Note:
There is another reason we might want to have other nations to have FRCs. Since my cell phone has facial recognition, I think US Navy ships will have a hard time hiding among the traffic, particularly at the start of a conflict when their satellites are operational, and their fishing boats and merchant ships seem to be everywhere. But telling a USN FRC from a Vietnamese, Philippine, or Malaysian FRC would be quite difficult. It would complicate targeting.